-
7827.099589
- Grant Sanderson, of 3blue1brown, has put up a phenomenal YouTube video explaining Grover’s algorithm, and dispelling the fundamental misconception about quantum computing, that QC works simply by “trying all the possibilities in parallel.” Let me not futz around: this video explains, in 36 minutes, what I’ve tried to explain over and over on this blog for 20 years … and it does it better. …
-
37248.099779
It is a pleasure to read and respond to Professor Orr’s learned statement of a conservatism, one that is both rooted in tradition and updated to the contemporary. Conservatism’s top values, we learn, are order, hierarchy, a sense of belonging to a particular community in a particular time and place, a deference to tradition, and a resistance to changes that are too sweeping or too quick. Simultaneously, conservatism is distrustful of abstract definitions, eschews commitments to universal principles and certainties, preferring the empirical, the particular, and the pragmatic. Professor Orr devotes a paragraph or two to explicating further each of those core concepts.
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37282.099788
The most direct route to political fundamentals is to ask: What should governments do? The different ‘isms’—liberalism, socialism, fascism, and so on—answer that question based on their most cherished values, holding that the purpose of government is to achieve those values. Yet societies are complex and we create many kinds of social institutions—businesses, schools, friendships and families, sports teams, churches/synagogues/mosques/temples, associations dedicated to artistic and scientific pursuits, governments, and so on—to achieve our important values.
-
37306.099794
It is difficult to overstate the extent to which contemporary political debates fail to address the underlying philosophical arguments that inform the way we govern our societies and the leaders we elected to do so. It is therefore with tremendous pleasure that I hosted a set of both written and in-person discussions between two of the great minds of modern political and philosophical thought. As you will see, Dr. James Orr, a friend and regular guest on my show, sets out with tremendous clarity and skill the arguments for the conservative worldview. He is ably challenged by Professor Stephen R. C. Hicks, another friend and favourite interviewee of mine, who argues for liberalism as the correct orientation towards the world. The debate is hugely informative, productive, and, I hope, of use to the reader—it certainly has been to me.
-
64323.099807
The gravitational Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, where quantum particles acquire phase shifts in curvature-free regions due to a gauge-fixed metric perturbation hµν , highlights the intriguing gauge dependence of spacetime. This study explores whether Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), which views spacetime as emerging from SU(2)- and diffeomorphism-invariant spin networks, can accommodate this effect. The AB effect suggests that LQG should incorporate gauge dependence at the quantum level, which appears challenging within its relational, gauge-invariant framework. Potential modifications to LQG, such as introducing gauge-fixing constraints or effective fields, may require assumptions aligned with substantivalism, potentially diverging from its emergent paradigm. These results invite a thoughtful reconsideration of spacetime’s ontological status, encouraging a dialogue between relational and substantivalist perspectives in quantum gravity.
-
64341.099812
In a recent reply to my criticisms (Found. Phys. 55:5, 2025), Carcassi, Oldofredi, and Aidala (COA) admitted that their no-go result for ψ-ontic models is based on the implicit assumption that all states are equally distinguishable, but insisted that this assumption is a part of the ψ-ontic models defined by Harrigan and Spekkens, thus maintaining their result’s validity. In this note, I refute their argument again, emphasizing that the ontological models framework (OMF) does not entail this assumption. I clarify the distinction between ontological distinctness and experimental distinguishability, showing that the latter depends on dynamics absent from OMF, and address COA’s broader claims about quantum statistical mechanics and Bohmian mechanics.
-
64388.099817
There has been considerable discussion in the philosophical literature of the past decade or so of a view that has come to be known as “wave function realism,” which I will abbreviate as WFR. The basic claim of this view is that quantum theory gives us motivation to think that quantum wave functions should be thought of as fields on a space of very high (or perhaps infinite) dimension, and that this space is in some important sense more fundamental than familiar three-dimensional space or four-dimensional spacetime. Note that this is much stronger than the mere claim that quantum states represent something physically real, a claim that I myself have defended (Myrvold 2020a, 2020b).
-
165939.099822
The work of George Eliot (1819–1880) challenges any strong
disjunction between philosophy and art. Her deepest philosophical
interests were in ethics, aesthetics, and the relation between them. Indebted above all to Spinozism and Romanticism, she developed her
thinking in sustained dialogue with the European philosophical
tradition, both before and after she began to write fiction under the
pseudonym “George Eliot” in 1857. She wrote novels,
shorter stories, poetry, and review essays, and throughout her career
she experimented with literary form. Through her bestselling novels,
her engagements with philosophy and with contemporary questions about
morality, art, politics, feminism, religion and science reached wide
readerships.
-
195334.099827
This paper proposes a theory-neutral formal framework designed to accommodate data that implicates consciousness in anomalous observer-linked phenomena, including structured accounts sometimes interpreted as involving alleged non-human intelligence. Motivated by growing empirical reports in which observer phenomenology appears coupled to system behavior, the paper introduces an explanatory workspace that expands the standard quantum state space to include a phenomenal dimension.
-
483875.099832
The interpretation of quantum measurements presents a fundamental challenge in quantum mechanics, with concepts such as the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI), Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI), and Bohmian Mechanics (BM) offering distinct perspectives. We propose the Branched Hilbert Subspace Interpretation (BHSI), which describes measurement as branching the local Hilbert space of a system into parallel subspaces. We formalize the mathematical framework of BHSI using branching and the engaging and disengaging unitary operators to relationally and causally update the states of observers. Unlike the MWI, BHSI avoids the ontological proliferation of worlds and copies of observers, realizing the Born rule based on branch weights. Unlike the CI, BHSI retains the essential features of the MWI: unitary evolution and no wavefunction collapse. Unlike the BM, BHSI does not depend on a nonlocal structure, which may conflict with relativity. We apply BHSI to examples such as the double-slit experiment, the Bell test, Wigner and his friend, and the black hole information paradox. In addition, we explore whether recohering branches can be achieved in BHSI. Compared to the CI and MWI, BHSI provides a minimalist, unitarity-preserving, collapse-free, and probabilistically inherent alternative interpretation of quantum measurements.
-
483896.099836
Recent results have shown that singularities can be avoided from the general relativistic standpoint in Lorentzian-Euclidean black holes by means of the transition from a Lorentzian to an Euclidean region where time loses its physical meaning and becomes imaginary. This dynamical mechanism, dubbed “atemporality”, prevents the emergence of black hole singularities and the violation of conservation laws. In this paper, the notion of atemporality together with a detailed discussion of its implications is presented from a philosophical perspective. The main result consists in showing that atemporality is naturally related to conservation laws.
-
483976.099842
This paper aims to offer an alternative account for understanding scientific models based on metaphors. To accomplish this, we analyze Darwin’s use of metaphors, such as the notion of powerful Being and Struggle for Existence, in order to represent part of the process taking place in natural selection. The proposal emerges from two provocative issues. First, that the use of metaphors in philosophical and scientific literature is a form of approach that together with other “linguistic tropes in science dies hard” (Bailer-Jones 2002a; Keller 2002, p.117). Second, there are still unsolved problems in the literature of scientific models and debates using metaphors in science as the main epistemological approach.
-
541659.099847
Marletto and Vedral [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 040401 (2020)] propose that the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phase is locally mediated by entanglement between a charged particle and the quantized electromagnetic field, asserting gauge independence for non-closed paths. Using quantum electrodynamics (QED), we critically analyze their model and demonstrate that the AB phase arises from the interaction with the vector potential A, not from entanglement, which is merely a byproduct of the QED framework. We show that their field-based energy formulation, intended to reflect local electromagnetic interactions, is mathematically flawed due to an incorrect prefactor and involves fields inside the solenoid, failing to support local mediation of the phase. Its equivalence to qv · A holds only in the Coulomb gauge, undermining their claim of a gauge-independent local mechanism. Furthermore, we confirm that the AB phase is gauge-dependent for non-closed paths, contradicting their assertion. Our analysis reaffirms the semi-classical interpretation, where the AB phase is driven by the vector potential A, with entanglement playing no causal role in its generation.
-
541745.099852
This paper aims to resolve the incompatibility between two extant gauge-invariant accounts of the Abelian Higgs mechanism: the first account uses global gauge symmetry breaking, and the second eliminates spontaneous symmetry breaking entirely. We resolve this incompatibility by using the constrained Hamiltonian formalism in symplectic geometry. First we argue that, unlike their local counterparts, global gauge symmetries are physical. The symmetries that are spontaneously broken by the Higgs mechanism are then the global ones. Second, we explain how the dressing field method singles out the Coulomb gauge as a preferred gauge for a gauge-invariant account of the Abelian Higgs mechanism. Based on the existence of this group of global gauge symmetries that are physical, we resolve the incompatibility between the two accounts by arguing that the correct way to carry out the second method is to eliminate only the redundant gauge symmetries, i.e. those local gauge symmetries which are not global. We extend our analysis to quantum field theory, where we show that the Abelian Higgs mechanism can be understood as spontaneous global U(1) symmetry breaking in the C -algebraic sense.
-
627517.099858
[Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Klaas Kraay replaces the
former entry on this topic by the previous author.]
The topic of divine freedom concerns the extent to which a divine
being — in particular, the supreme divine being, God — can
be free. There are, of course, many different conceptions of who or
what God is. This entry will focus on one enormously important and
influential model, according to which God is a personal being who
exists necessarily, who is essentially omnipotent, omniscient,
perfectly good, and perfectly rational, and who is the creator and
sustainer of all that contingently
exists.[ 1 ]
(For more discussion of these attributes, see the entries on
omnipotence,
omniscience,
perfect goodness,
and
creation and conservation.)
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742846.099863
Given the extreme importance that Wittgenstein attached to the
aesthetic dimension of life, it is in one sense surprising that he
wrote so little on the subject. It is true that we have the notes
assembled from his lectures on aesthetics given to a small group of
students in private rooms in Cambridge in the summer of 1938
(Wittgenstein 1966, henceforth LA) and we have G. E. Moore’s
record of some of Wittgenstein’s lectures in the period
1930–33 (Moore 1972). Of Wittgenstein’s own writings, we
find remarks on literature, poetry, architecture, the visual arts, and
especially music and the philosophy of culture more broadly scattered
throughout his writings on the philosophies of language, mind,
mathematics, and philosophical method, as well as in his more personal
notebooks; a number of these are collected in Culture and
Value (Wittgenstein 1980a).
-
830044.099867
Philosophers interested in medicine and healthcare research should focus on the choice of health concepts. Conceptual choice is akin to conceptual engineering but, in addition to assessing whether a concept suits an objective, or offering a better one, it evaluates objectives, ranks them, and discusses stakeholders’ entitlement. To show the importance of choosing health concepts, I summarize the internal debate in medicine, showcasing definitions, constructs, and scales. To argue it is a philosophical task, I analyze the medical controversy over health as adaptation and self-management. I conclude with a to-do list of conceptual choice tasks, generalizable beyond medicine.
-
830064.099872
Since Andrew Jameton first introduced the concept of moral distress, a growing theoretical literature has attempted to identify its distinctive features. This theoretical work has overlooked a central feature of morally distressing situations: disempowerment. My aim is to correct this neglect by arguing for a new test for theories of moral distress. I call this the disempowerment requirement: a theory of moral distress ought to accommodate the disempowerment of morally distressing situations. I argue for the disempowerment requirement and illustrate how to apply it by showing that recent responsibility-based theories of moral distress fail to pass the test.
-
834304.099877
I wrote these words about 20 years ago. They seem especially apt these days. Leaders have been known to inspire blind faith. Michels (1962: 93) refers to "the belief so frequent among the people that their leaders belong to a higher order of humanity than themselves" evidenced by "the tone of veneration in which the idol's name is pronounced, the perfect docility with which the least of his signs is obeyed, and the indignation which is aroused by any critical attack on his personality." …
-
973515.099881
Chinese Daoism is a Chinese philosophy of natural practice structured
around a normative focus on dào (道 path, way). This naturalist philosophical project treated dào as a
structure of natural possibility for living beings. Unlike similar
Western naturalisms, e.g., pragmatism, Daoism’s foil was
contemporary: the Confucian-Mohist (Ru-Mo) dialectic about
human (人 rén human, social)
dào. Daoism’s critique of Ru-Mo debate
concerns the role of natural (天 tiān
sky-nature) dào vs human dào (socially
constructed guidance). Daoism’s founding
personages[ 1 ]
( Laozi and
Zhuangzi)
did not coin their “-ism.” The two Classical texts,
credited to their titled masters (子 zǐ
son), emerged during the Classical period (5th to
3rd C. BC).
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1003020.099886
In this paper, we investigate the treatment of the direction of time in Bohmian mechanics. We show how Bohmian mechanics can account for the direction of time in different ways. In particular, we argue that Bohmian mechanics can be employed to accommodate reductionism, because there always is an asymmetry in the initial conditions when forward and backward evolutions of the configuration of matter are compared. It can also be employed to accommodate primitivism and relationalism due to the fact that Bohmian mechanics is a first order theory that recognizes only position as a primitive physical magnitude. We show how this fact can be employed to support a primitive direction of time by assuming Leibnizian relationalism, which reduces the direction of time to change in the configuration of matter with that change being directed as a primitive matter of fact.
-
1003047.099891
The capacity for purposeful choice among genuine alternatives—commonly termed free will— presents a profound challenge to a scientific worldview often perceived as deterministic. Understanding how seemingly goal-directed actions, observed across the spectrum of life from bacteria navigating chemical gradients (chemotaxis) to humans deliberating complex decisions, can arise from underlying physical and chemical processes is a central question in both philosophy and science. This paper explores the possibility of naturalizing free will by conceptualizing it as emergent autonomy: a capacity rooted in the unique organization of life itself, an organization that unfolds dynamically in real, lived time (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019; Moore, 2023). Foundational work by thinkers like Kauffman & Clayton (2006) on emergence and organization provides crucial groundwork for such an approach.
-
1007232.099896
Causal Finitism—the thesis that nothing can have an infinite causal history—implies that there is a first cause, and our best hypothesis for what a first cause would be is God. Thus:
- If Causal Finitism is true, God exists. …
-
1038440.099901
A nameless delivery boy in a nameless city, a refugee from a nameless country, fleeing a nameless Strongman, indentured to a nameless Supervisor, dispatched to nameless customers with unmarked packages, not knowing, yet, the rules of the system, and the language, in which he is trapped—a story told, though we do not know it yet, by a nameless narrator in a nameless city, a refugee from a nameless country, fleeing a nameless Strongman. …
-
1060792.099905
This is an introduction to a collection of articles on the conceptual history of epigenesis, from Aristotle to Harvey, Cavendish, Kant and Erasmus Darwin, moving into nineteenth-century biology with Wolff, Blumenbach and His, and onto the twentieth century and current issues, with Waddington and epigenetics. The purpose of the topical collection is to emphasize how epigenesis marks the point of intersection of a theory of biological development and a (philosophical) theory of active matter. We also wish to show that the concept of epigenesis existed prior to biological theorization and that it continues to permeate thinking about development in recent biological debates.
-
1224935.09991
Maribel Barroso suggests exploration of an interesting avenue for inductive inference. The material theory, as I have formulated it, takes as its elements propositions that assert scientific facts. Relations of inductive support among them assess their truth or falsity. She proposes that we should take models as the elements instead of proposition. In favor of this proposal is that models have a pervasive presence in science. We should be able to confront them with evidence in a systematic way. Reconfiguring inductive inference as relations over models faces some interesting questions. Just what is it for models to be supported inductively? Can the material theory be adapted to this new case? In works cited in her review, Barroso has already begun the study of inductive relations among models in science, using insights from Whewell’s work. She is, it seems to me, well placed to seek answers to these questions. I wish her well in her continuing efforts.
-
1227157.099915
‘Structural hylemorphism’ holds that the concept of structure should replace the allegedly less explanatory concept of form. Adherents do not, however, give us a precise idea of what structure is meant to be, and on analysis it is difficult to know how to define it as a replacement for form. I compare and contrast classical and structural hylemorphism. I rehearse the ‘content-fixing problem’ for structuralism about form, then set out the ‘qualitative problem’. These seem insurmountable obstacles to a viable version of structural hylemorphism. Exploration of the relation between quantity and quality shows that classical form can never be reduced to/replaced by a quantitative concept of form. In the end, structure does not capture what metaphysics requires. More radically, I suggest that there is no clear concept of what structure is. Classical hylemorphism, by contrast, gives us form in full metaphysical technicolor—adequate both for science and for fundamental metaphysics.
-
1233744.099921
The nodes of the ‘geometric trinity’ are: (i) general relativity (in which gravitational effects are a manifestation of spacetime curvature), (ii) the ‘teleparallel equivalent’ of general relativity (which trades spacetime curvature for torsion), and (iii) the ‘symmetric teleparallel equivalent’ of general relativity (which trades spacetime curvature for non-metricity). One popular reformulation of (iii) is ‘coincident general relativity’, but this theory has yet to receive any philosophical attention. This article aims both to introduce philosophers to coincident general relativity, and to undertake a detailed assessment of its features.
-
1233779.099925
How to make sense of the notion of force-free motion which seems to be presupposed by Newton’s first law? One can identify in the literature various different answers to this question, one among which is to be found in the writings of Torretti (1983). In a wonderful recent article, however, Hoek (2023) has proposed a radical revision to our understanding of Newton’s first law, motivated on both exegetical and philosophical grounds. In light of this, one is left wondering whether this reconceptualisation of the content of Newton’s first law obviates the need to provide a notion of force-free motion with which to undergird it. In this note, I’ll argue that this is not the case: one can (and should!) endorse Hoek’s understanding of the first law, while nevertheless seeking to define force-free motions in one of the various ways which have been proposed in the literature.
-
1233797.09993
We consider the distinction between ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ approaches introduced by Read (2020a) in the context of the dynamical/geometrical debate. We show that one fruitful way in which to understand this distinction is in terms of what one takes the kinematically possible models of a given theory to represent; moreover, we show that the qualified/unqualified distinction is applicable not only to the geometrical approach (which is the case considered by Read (2020a)), but also to the dynamical approach. Finally, having made these points, we connect them to other discussions of representation and of explanation in this corner of the literature.